[Foul Play by Charles Reade]@TWC D-Link bookFoul Play CHAPTER XXVI 4/45
However, when she was up, she determined to find her own breakfast; she felt it would not do to be too dependent, and on a person of uncertain humor; such for the moment she chose to pretend to herself was Hazel. Accordingly she went down to the sea to look for crayfish.
She found abundance.
There they lay in the water; you had but to stoop and pick them up. But alas! they were black, lively, viperish; she went with no great relish for the task to take one up; it wriggled maliciously; she dropped it, and at that very moment, by a curious coincidence, remembered she was sick and tired of crayfish; she would breakfast on fruits.
She crossed the sand, took off her shoes, and paddled through the river, and; having put on her shoes again, was about to walk up through some rank grass to the big wood, when she heard a voice behind her, and it was Mr.Hazel. She bit her lip (it was broad daylight now), and prepared quietly to discourage this excessive assiduity.
He came up to her panting a little, and, taking off his hat, said, with marked respect, "I beg your pardon, Miss Rolleston, but I know you hate reptiles; now there are a few snakes in that long grass; not poisonous ones." "Snakes!" cried Helen; "let me get home; there--I'll go without my breakfast." "Oh, I hope not," said Hazel, ruefully; "why, I have been rather fortunate this morning, and it is all ready." "That is a different thing," said Helen, graciously; "you must not have your trouble for nothing, I suppose." Directly after breakfast, Hazel took his ax and some rope from the boat, and went off in a great hurry to the jungle.
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